Vibration of the muscular tail causes separate segments to bounce against adjoining ones, creating buzzing sound. If it feels cornered, the startling, sizzling buzz of its rattle is an unmistakable warning.

20161010

Pagans and Powderkegs: The Ironic Evil of Macbeth

Pagans
and Powderkegs: The
Ironic Evil of Macbeth

Ere the bat hath
flown

His cloister’d
flight, ere to black Hecat’s summons

The shard-borne
beetle, with his drowsy hums,

Hath rung night’s
yawning peal, there shall be done

A deed of dreadful
note.

(2.2.40-44)

Underlying the central themes of Macbeth--
ruthless ambition, the inherent avarice of power, supernatural evil, hidden
meanings and half- truths, and the contagious nature of tyranny, there is a
deeper historical subtext Shakespeare was incorporating, as surely as a
storyteller will conjure ghosts around a campfire. The legacy of the mythical
Scottish royal ancestor Banquo and his relationship to the England’s new King
James I, a celebration of triumph over evil “terrorists” in the royal foiling
of the “Gunpowder Plot” (which had very nearly done away with the entire
English government) was given legendary life. As well, the ideal of Divine
Providence taming the savage outlands, populated with mysterious pagans and
creatures of the night, was brought to life in Shakespeare’s most supernatural
tragedy.

“They can raise
storms and tempests in the air, either upon Sea or land, though not
universally, but in such a particular place and prescribed bounds, as God will
permit them so to trouble.”

(King James I, Daemonology,
1597;qtd. Nostbakken 107)

Macbeth’s supernatural evil, repeated
through time with extremely powerful magical charms and the spilling of blood,
was the acting out of King James’ own ruthless Scottish heritage, cloaked in an
air of Godly power and pomp.While a
plot to assassinate the leadership of England with devilish explosives had just
been thwarted, within the next generation King James’ own son would become the
first monarch in Europe to be tried and executed, in a revolutionary uprising
(Hawkes 11). James’ own treatise on witchcraft, “Daemonology,” would be
used to torture and execute tens of thousands of accused pagans, and would
haunt the New World at the Salem witch trials. Under a cloak of good triumphing
over evil, Macbeth actually heralds the dawn of a brutal, Machiavellian
era of colonization, genocide, and industrial warfare.

Did Shakespeare consciously cast a curse upon
the English culture, or did his flair for irony unwittingly unleash the
powerful forces surrounding the Macbeth legend? Recent attempts by
witches in Scotland to lift the “Macbeth curse” have met with tragic ends. It
seems the ghosts of this play still haunt the psyche of humankind, and refuse
to be put to rest (Mysterious Incidents, FarShores).

I have no spur

To prick the
sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting
ambition, which o’erleaps itself…

(1.7.25-27)

Both the common people and the royalty in the
audience would understand and celebrate all references to James’ ancestor
Banquo, the corrupting chaos of treason, and the portrayal of twisted
supernatural forces. Macbeth was a cathartic therapy for the kingdom,
giving life to the hopes of triumph over evil conspirators, and heralding the
Divine dominion of the English culture.

Considering that Shakespeare’s most likely source for historical
reference, Raphael Holinsheds’ Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland
(1587) recounts Banquo as conspiring with Macbeth in the plot to kill Duncan
(whom he portrays as ineffective), and chronicles the real Macbeth as a decent
monarch who reigned well for seven years until he turned on Banquo, it is very
ironic, but politically expedient, of Shakespeare to turn the characters of the
tragedy toward more vicious ends (Hawkes, 124).

The most outstanding irony of Macbeth’s
contorted history is that Banquo’s ghost was a figment of the Scottish
imagination. Banquo was a MYTHICAL figure Scottish genealogists created to give
legitimacy to the Stuart family tree (Nostbakken, 28). So as Shakespeare shows
Banquo murdered by Macbeth, he is twisting Holinshed’s history by the ear, and
forcing Britain to question the concept of royal lineage in general. What
happens when the Divinity of the Sovereign in God’s Chain of Being becomes
completely corrupted?

But when the planets

In evil
mixture to disorder wander,

What
plagues and what portents, what mutiny!

What raging
of the sea, shaking of the earth!

Commotion
in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors

Divert and
crack, rend and deracinate

The unity
and married of calm states

Quite from
their fixture! O’ when degree is shak’d

Which is
the ladder of all high designs,

The
enterprise is sick.

(Trolius and Cressida, 1. 3. 95-103)

Like America’s current “War on Terror,” at the time Shakespeare wrote Macbeth,
the British monarchy was fighting it’s own war on terrorism and “evil.”
Numerous attempts had been made on Queen Elizabeth’s life, and a major plot to
assassinate the entire royal family with explosives, by Guy Fawkes and a
conspiracy of Jesuits, had only narrowly been avoided. In James’ war on witches
in Scotland, evidence of a plot by witches to drown him by stirring up storms
at sea had been revealed to the public.

In
this war on evil, clear distinctions and prejudices existed in the English
culture, and superstition ruled the day. Witch trials became routine under the
reign of King James, and it was felt that torture and public execution were
appropriate for those who dared call on supernatural forces outside of Divine
providence. In short, the English culture was rife with dread, paranoia, and
fear of the unknown. Shakespeare drew upon King James’ own extensive literature
on the subject of evil, and used it to portray the weird sisters and Hecate as
wicked manipulators of mankind.

“They
can make folks to become frenetic or Maniac, which likewise is very possible to
their master to do, since they are but natural sicknesses: and so he may lay on
these kinds, as well as any others. They can make spirits either to follow and
trouble persons, or haunt certain houses, and affray oftentimes the
inhabitants: as hath been known to be done by our Witches at this time. And
likewise thay can make some to be possessed with spirits, & so to become
very Demoniacs: and this last sort is very possible likewise to the Devil their
Master to do, since he may easily send his own angels to trouble in what form
he pleases, any whom God will permit him to use.”

(King James I, Daemonology,
1597;qtd. Nostbakken 107)

The
problem with any self-righteous and irrational war against a certain class of
people, based on prejudice and fear, is that innocent people are often
victimized, and hatred justified, leading to atrocity. We have seen this
throughout history, and at the writing of Macbeth, cruelty was the rule
rather than the exception. After all, King James was the man who spawned a
thousand Protestant wars in the expanding colonies, against pagans, Indians,
Irish, Muslims, Catholics… and anyone who did not bow down to the Divine
dominion of the British Empire. Many of these conflicts continue to this day,
after having claimed millions of victims.

Ironically, in Shakespeare’s support of this “War on Terror,” much as
our current cultural war is doing, the portrayal of the evil forces actually
contributed to the chaos and the influence of disorder. Every time Macbeth
was performed, the Weird Sisters and Hecate unleashed potent incantations, both
magically and in the public mind. The murderous intrigue of the play and the
power witches held over otherwise invincible warriors was actually a promotion
of evil influence. The more so-called Christians projected evil on the
landscape, and subjected the accused evil-doers to unspeakable acts of “Divine
Inquisition,” the more they themselves became twisted toward evil ends. King
James’ treatise on demons and witches, taken in a more cynical light, should
have been seen as the ultimate crafty trick of the Devil, to cause people to do
murderous and immoral things to the common healers of the time.

MacduffWhat’s the disease he means?

Malcolm‘Tis call’d the evil.

A most
miraculous work in this good king;

Which often,
since my here-remain in England,

I have seen him
do. How he solicits Heaven,

Himself best
knows: but strangely visited people,

All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to
the eye,

The mere
despair of surgery, he cures,

Hanging a
golden stamp about their necks,

To the
succeeding royalty he leaves

The healing
benediction. With this strange virtue,

He hath a
heavenly gift of prophecy,

And sundry
blessings hang about his throne,

That speak him full of grace.

(4. 3.146-159)

This passage from Macbeth, extolling
the divine virtues of the English king Edward the Confessor and referring to
his practice of“laying on of hands,” is
a promotion of England’s new King James, in the context of Shakespeare’s
contemporary political scene (Nostbakken, 29).King James had recently succeeded Queen Elizabeth, and hopes were
running exceedingly high for the transfer of power from the Tudors to the
Stuarts, and for the uniting of all the kingdoms of Britain (Nostbakken, 27).
Shakespeare, of course, being both a propagandist and and artist, seized the
opportunity for popular appeal and royal approval, in soliciting favor from the
new monarchy.

Macbeth indirectly references an
important prophecy about King James which had been presented in dramatic form
the year before Shakespeare wrote it. The three Weird Sisters are a twisted
reference to the “Three Sybils,” a Latin play which was performed for
King James at Oxford in 1605, which Shakespeare likely witnessed first-hand. In
the “Three Sybils” three prophetic women herald King James’ heritage and
hail his supreme rule over Great Britain (Nostbakken, 30).

Hail thou who
rulest Scotland.

Hail thou who
rulest England.

Hail thou who
rulest Ireland.

Hail thou to
whom France gives tides whilst the others

give lands.

Hail thou whom
Britain, now untied though formerly

divided,
cherishes.

Hail thou
supreme British, Irish, Gallic Monarch.

(Dr. Gwinn, Tres Sibyllae, 1605; qtd.
Nostbakken, 30)

In the same year, 1605, the sinister
Gunpowder Plot nearly took out the entire royal family using the alchemical
potion of gunpowder, associated with the devil and witches in the popular mind,
and gave England a powerful metaphor for the “evil enemy” of the Empire, much
as Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been demonized after the attacks on the World
Trade Towers. Shakespeare quite ironically turned the Three Sybils into his
Weird Sisters, as a wrinkled reflection of the themes of treason and terror,
which were haunting the kingdom outside the theatre.

“ But will God permit these wicked
instruments by the power of the Devil their master, to trouble by any of these
means, any that believes in him?

No doubt, for there are three kinds of
folks whom God will permit so to be tempted or troubled; the wicked for their
horrible sins, to punish them in like measure; The godly that are sleeping in
any great sins or infirmities and weaknesses in faith, to waken them up the
faster by such an uncouth form: and even some of the best, that their patience
may be tried before the world, as JOB’S was.”

(King James I, Daemonology, 1597;qtd. Nostbakken 107)

In the history of
European theatre, no play has gained such a troubled reputation as Macbeth.
Since its very first performance in front of King James, it has generated
superstition and curses, literally, physically, and psychologically.

"No other play has had more
bad luck associated with it: coronaries,

car accidents, mysterious ailments,
botched lines, and sword

wounds. The theatrical superstition
is not taken lightly: even to

pronounce the play's title is
considered bad dressing-room form. Its

very names is a curse....It's also
considered as the height of bad

dressing-room form to quote from
the play under any circumstances.

For hundreds of years it's been
delicately referred to as 'The Scottish

Play' or simply 'That Play.'"

(Norrie Epstein, The
Friendly Shakespeare, qtd. Macbeth Homepage)

As the dramatic tradition carries Macbeth
forward in time, it also carries the legendary curse of the play, which holds
that nearly every traditional production stirs up so much “toil and trouble”
that often people are permanently injured, psychologically disturbed, or even
killed. One of the few film directors who dared to present the wicked tragedy
on screen, Roman Polanski (1971), was enchanted with other manifestations of
evil, in Rosemary’s Baby and the Fearless Vampire Killers, his
two preceding films before the Manson family murdered his wife Sharon Tate.

Macbeth, while
purportedly a morality play about deliberately misleading language and treason,
by the addition of extensive magical rituals and incantations becomes instead a
Black Mass of murderous consequences. While attempting to give form to the
mysterious world of the supernatural, it actually unleashes the spirits and
characters which society professes to be afraid of. Similar to modern horror
films, Macbeth was designed to scare the wits of the common folk and
dissuade any one with treasonous intentions. Yet at the same time it gives
power to the underclass and the revolutionary, showing how vulnerable the
ruling class can be.

Macbeth exposes the nightmarish and
anarchic results of allowing doublespeak and half-truth, or “equivocation,” to
entice and influence the future. Yet Shakespeare himself is a premier master of
the double-entendre in the English language! Witness how he weaves his magical
“equivocations” into the drama of Macbeth more effectively than an
entire coven of witches couldhave!This is the profound irony that Shakespeare
celebrates with this political tragedy, and the challenge he puts forth to our
culture:where does the “truth” lie?

HecateO, well done! I commend your pains,

And every one shall
share I’ th’gains.

And now about the
cauldron sing,

Like elves and fairies
in a ring,

Enchanting all that you
put in.

2 WitchBy the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this
way comes.—

(4. 1. 39-45)

As King James’ war against witchcraft would degenerate into
murderous mob behavior, the evil of Macbeth is embodied and empowered
every time it is performed. What is the lesson for a ruthless society watching
ruthlessness play out-- that conspiracy doesn’t pay, or that one should choose
one’s allies more wisely? Would Macbeth have done much better, for
example, if he had made friends with the witches, and been less afraid of the
consequences? The Chain of Being appears to be very tenuous in retrospect, and Macbeth
is an historical measure of how low “nobility” will go to achieve domination.

Has humanity learned
anything from “the Scottish play,” given the terrorized and barbaric state of
our world, or will militaristic leaders continue to lead us down the path toward
mass murder and chaos in the name of power? To kill or not to kill—that is the
question.